How to Rekindle Your Child’s Love of Learning

As we move through the first few months of the New Year, this is a great time to rekindle your child’s love of learning. After all, the winter months can be tough for students: The memory of the Christmas holiday is fading and there isn’t another long break for months. So if you’re finding that your child needs some extra encouragement in school right now, don’t worry — we’re here to help. In this blog, we are going to reflect on what we’ve learned the past year about keeping our young learners engaged and even in love with learning.

Encouragement is everything.

As parents, you are your child’s first and most influential role models; they take clues from your behavior and attitude on how to deal with the world around them. Therefore when it comes to learning, you should always be positive and take an interest in what they’re doing. Staying in touch with your child’s school and teachers is beneficial and it demonstrates that his or her education is important to you. Your enthusiasm will be contagious.

How do I encourage my child’s love of learning?

Over the past year (and earlier), we have published numerous blogs on ways to be involved with your child’s education and to promote lifelong learning in school and at home. In fact, in a blog entitled “Lifelong Learning: In the Classroom and Beyond,” we discussed just that. Below are the suggestions we made in that blog along with links to other blogs that we’ve written offering advice on carrying out those suggestions:

Help your child set new goals. Remember that for goals to be achieved, they have to be specific and realistic. “I want to do better in math” or “I’m going to get a 100% on every assignment I do in every class for the rest of my life” sound great, but a better goal would be, “I want to raise my math grade by 10 points this marking period.”

Re-establish a routine. This is especially important if your family fell out of one over the long break. Studies find that having a consistent schedule for sleep, meals (including taking healthy lunches to school), exercise, and homework provides a sense of comfort and stability that is essential to a child’s well-being.